"My fellow professors and I are supposed to have nuggets of optimism at the ready, gauzy and gooey encomiums about infinite possibilities, the march of progress and..."

"... that apocryphal arc, the one that bends toward justice. But all I’ve got is the metastasizing pit of fear in my own gut...."

Writes Frank Bruni, in "What Do You Tell a College Student Graduating Into This America?" (NYT).

What's the point of wisdom if it doesn't apply in the bad times? 

Anyway... for the annals of Things I Asked Grok: 1. When did people stop talking about a fear that they have in the "pit of their stomach" and begin to refer to the fear as a "pit in their stomach"? 2. Am I supposed to picture the "pit in the stomach" as something like an apricot pit? 3. Aren't apricot pits poisonous... and are they more or less poisonous than the seeds of the pong-pong fruit, last seen on "White Lotus"?

"And the postmortems after a Trump victory would not focus primarily on any ill-considered, easily weaponized remarks, such as a comment Biden made on Tuesday..."

"... that seemed to refer to Trump’s supporters as 'garbage.' They’d emphasize and dwell on the unanswered questions surrounding the primary that never happened. They’d be postmortems like no others, because Trump is such a dire threat. That was the proposition of Biden’s 2020 campaign — he came out of quasi-retirement in his late 70s because, he told us, stopping Trump demanded it.... There’d be recognizable elements of that reaction, such as a hindsight-is-20-20 analysis of the losing candidate’s strategic decisions and strengths and weaknesses. What if Harris had chosen a different running mate? What if she’d more quickly, squarely and eloquently articulated the changes in her positions? What if she’d done more probing media interviews sooner, to beat back any suggestion of excessive caution?... What if that incumbent hadn’t held on so tightly for so long? That’s no doubt part of why Biden has reportedly itched to get out on the campaign trail on behalf of Harris.... And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us. That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom."

That's Frank Bruni, over at the NYT, with his pre-postmortem, in a piece called "Biden’s Stake in This Election Is Like Nobody Else’s."

"That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom" — What can can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom? The goodness of Biden and the good that he's done for us, I guess. Absurdly, this is the second day in a row that I'm musing over a confusing metaphor of something that seems to be floating on water. Of all the things worth getting fervent and desperate about, Biden's feelings are low on the list. I think the American people should be quite angry at Biden for what he did to the procedure of choosing a President this time around. Too damned bad if he's sad about it.

"No, you keen-eyed MAGA sleuths, Biden’s aides didn’t schedule an early debate so that they could replace him after he flails."

"Nor did they engineer Hunter Biden’s conviction just to look virtuous. Democrats, it is not the case that if journalists just stop talking about Biden’s age, many Americans miraculously won’t notice it. Nor are there tea leaves auguring a revolt against Trump at the Republican convention. A respected public intellectual privately promoted that idea to me. And Michelle Obama will not — abracadabra! — be riding to the rescue.... Indulging such illusions is dangerous. Those of us who believe that Trump’s return to the White House would be ruinous must prosaically and persistently make the case for Biden’s superiority, flaws and all. We must plan, plod, slog. No sorcery will save us."

Writes Frank Bruni, in "The Election of Magical Thinking" (NYT).

Is it just dangerous illusion and hope of "sorcery" that has us thinking about ways to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate?! Biden plainly looks and sounds as though he's not capable of performing the job anymore. Trusting him even until January 2025 seems like more of a dangerous game of magical thinking. Bruni has written his column to pooh-pooh those of us who are seriously worried about Biden and to take credit for pretending there's no problem worth talking about. 

But I don't think Bruni is delusional. I think he's bullshitting in print but in his head he's got it figured out. It's too hard to replace Biden* and it seems less likely to work than just crossing your fingers and — la la la — moving along as if nothing is amiss and you are crazy if you think so.** And you know who's really crazy? Donald Trump.

_______________________________

* Word that does not appear in Bruni's column: Kamala.

** There's a word for this: gaslighting.

"Most of the prominent Democrats with whom I speak have been concerned to the point of panic about how inept they’ve found [Biden's] campaign."

Said Frank Bruni in a "Round Table" discussion at the NYT, "Trump Is Blocking Out the Sun: Three Writers on the Political Impact of the Guilty Verdict."

And there's this gem from Olivia Nuzzi: "The eternal problem for candidates running against Donald Trump is that he sort of photosynthesizes any and all attention to grow bigger and stronger and block out the sun for everyone else around. He manages to define the terms of the conversation, and because he lives in his own reality, these things do not matter as they would for any other candidate."

Why face up to the smallness of Joe Biden when confronted with the ludicrous hugeness of Donald Trump?

"Everywhere I turn, people are rightly laboring to sound the alarm about Donald Trump’s spectacularly reckless, deeply evil expectorations...."

Frank Bruni expresses his frustration, in "We’re Running Out of Names for Trump. At Least Polite Ones" (NYT)(free access link!).

"Everywhere I turn...." reminds me of the famous Pauline Kael remark. But Pauline Kael was more self-aware. She said (get it right!):

"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them."

If everywhere you turn you see nothing but hatred of Trump, you're missing millions of your fellow citizens.

Kael was talking about the 1972 election, which Richard Nixon won by a stunning landslide.

"Like many other Americans struggling to find scraps of calm and slivers of hope in this anxious era..."

"... I resolved a while back not to get overly excited about Donald Trump’s overexcited utterances.... But I can’t shake a grandiose prophecy that he made repeatedly last year as he looked toward the 2024 presidential race. He took to calling it the 'final battle.'... [A]s he continued to rave biblically... my reaction changed, and it surprised me: He just may be right. Not in his cartoonish description of that conflict... but in terms of how profoundly meaningful the 2024 election could be...."

Writes Frank Bruni, in the NYT.

What I hear him saying in those opening lines to his column is: I'm not going to let Trump play me... and yet I just can't resist.

Bruni resolved not to get overly excited, so he's got his loophole. He's sticking with his resolve, but he still can get excited... whenever excitement is appropriate. He's not overly excited. Just the right amount of excited. 

Me, I am far more deeply resolved not to let Trump rhetoric excite me. I am a cool and distant observer. To me, the things he says are merely bloggable or not bloggable. I listen to Trump and to the people he plays — one way or another. I'm not one of the many Americans "struggling to find scraps of calm and slivers of hope in this anxious era." How can you struggle to find calm? To struggle is to be uncalm. How can calmness come in scraps?

Back to Bruni and skipping into the middle of things:

If the people on the losing side of an election believe that those on the winning side are digging the country’s graveyard, how do they accept and respect the results? The final battle we may be witnessing is between a governable and an ungovernable America, a faintly civil and a floridly uncivil one....

Ha ha, I skimmed over the context and, for an instant, I couldn't tell which side was which. Either side, losing, will go nuts looking for some way out, won't they? I lived through the Wisconsin uprising of 2011. 

But, of course, I know what I'm reading, what side Bruni is on, and that the general rule in politics is — as we say in Wisconsin — "All the assholes are over on the other side."

"Imagine you're a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Trump candidacy?"

The NYT asks a panel of political writers (along with other questions), in "He Has Nothing Else': Our Writers on Trump and the 2024 Election." From the answers:

David Brooks He makes the right enemies. He brought us peace and a good economy. 

Frank Bruni It’s an age of rage, and no candidate will tap into that as shamelessly and with as little regard for the consequences as the madman of Mar-a-Lago.... 

"Rather than Warnock trying to make Walker answer for his alliance with the former president, Walker insisted that Warnock defend his with the current one..."

"... a dynamic that doesn’t exactly track with media coverage of the midterms. We keep wondering how much Trump will wound Republican candidates. Warnock seemed plenty worried about how much Biden would wound him. So when he was asked whether Biden should run again in 2024, Warnock conspicuously dodged the question. 'I think that part of the problem with our politics right now is that it’s become too much about the politicians,' he said. 'You’re asking me who’s going to run in ’24? The people of Georgia get to decide who’s going to be their senator in three days — Monday.'"

Writes Frank Bruni in "Why Herschel Walker May Win" (NYT).

It's funny that Bruni expects the "dynamic" to "track with media coverage of the midterms." The media don't have that kind of control anymore. But they try so hard. 

"I’m glad we have Biden. I’m really, really glad. That’s because I haven’t forgotten whom and what he replaced. It’s because I remember how we started the year..."

"... with an amoral, would-be autocrat in the White House — versus how we’re finishing it. It’s because I don’t measure my presidents solely by the price of gas, the firmness of their grip on their political party or their odds of re-election. There is more to life, and to leadership, than that. Is Biden’s performance in the presidency superior to what another Democrat’s would be? I can’t say. It’s indisputably flawed.... But that doesn’t change the fact that what our country needed a little over a year ago was an end to President Donald Trump, and what Biden provided was just that.... To go by polls, Americans are judging Biden harshly, and many have soured on him.... But that doesn’t erase Biden’s fundamental decency. That doesn’t eliminate his capacity for empathy. Did his predecessor possess either? Not that I could tell. And as I try, in the spirit of the holiday season, to point you away from gloom and toward something, well, merrier...."

Frank Bruni dispenses wan Christmas cheer (in the NYT).

Readjust your expectations for Biden, and he's just fine. I note that it's a readjustment back to what he purported to be when he was running for President. I'm glad to see the bigger ideas shelved. Settle down and appreciate the good-enough.

"Vance deleted his old Trump-insulting tweets. He made his pilgrimage of atonement to Mar-a-Loco. He groveled."

"And he explained all of this in terms of Trump’s admirable performance as president, which supposedly won him over. He was clearly watching a different movie than many of the rest of us were.... On Twitter he bizarrely lashed out at the Times columnist Paul Krugman as 'one of many weird cat ladies who have too much power in our country,' then went after [Alec] Baldwin in a tactless way at a tactless time.... But he gets points for occasional honesty. Shortly after declaring his Senate candidacy on July 1, in an interview with Molly Ball for Time magazine, he acknowledged his past opposition to Trump and bluntly conceded that he needed 'to just suck it up and support him.' Suck it up he has — and how."

From "J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Hypocrisy" by Frank Bruni (NYT).

The tweet about Alec Baldwin was "Dear @jack let Trump back on. We need Alec Baldwin tweets."

"That this vision appeals to so many viewers, especially young ones, suggests a chilling and bleak perspective — on capitalism, on 'freedom,' on individual agency..."

"... that should stop us in our tracks.... Maybe the viewers of 'Squid Game' just thrill to the bold, cartoon-colored shock of it: Its visual and spiritual aesthetic are what you’d get if you crossed an episode of 'Teletubbies' with a highlights reel of Quentin Tarantino at his grisliest.... Then there’s the indiscriminate manner in which a huge hit becomes an even bigger phenomenon — a trend — divorced from its actual content.... The Times also published an article by Vanessa Friedman about how track suits were newly 'hot' because the 'Squid Game' contestants wear them (as a kind of prison uniform, mind you). The Times published another article, by Christina Morales, about the history of dalgona candy, which is a deadly prop in one of the series’s elimination contests. There was a link to instructions, by Genevieve Ko, on how to make it. In a week and a half, on Halloween, we’ll be bombarded by 'Squid Game' costumes.... To some extent, 'Squid Game' is big because it’s big, its first-burst popularity generating attention that begets even greater popularity as everyone wants in on the action and as a curiosity’s slippery tentacles reach farther and farther into people’s consciousness. But its commentary on class, greed and savagery is much too central to be incidental... [T]his portrait of life as a sadistic lottery and poverty as a hopeless torture chamber has resonance...."

From "Why the Popularity of ‘Squid Game’ Terrifies Me" by Frank Bruni (NYT).

1. Young people have been watching horror and violence for decades. Consumers have a taste for what they've consumed in the past. It's the kind of thing where to give more of the same, you have to give it more intensely and in a greater dose. The manufacturers of violent material do what they know they need to do to keep shocking.

2. But maybe it's not just a taste for horror and violence. Maybe it's the critique of capitalism that "has resonance." Bruni assumes that viewers begin with a gloomy attitude and that the show is confirming their pessimism. He does not consider the possibility that the show is anti-capitalism propaganda, designed to infect the mind of the young — not just to play with their pre-existing angst, but to direct their thinking.

3. Bruni provides some criticism of the New York Times. Once something is popular, it generates life-style articles that ride on the trend. He gives us some evidence, but doesn't observe the genderedness of this phenomenon. I can't help observing that his examples are articles written by women and the subjects — food and fashion — are stereotypically female. 

How does liberal media justify its failure to question the Lincoln Project and to discover the rot within?

I'm reading "When You Don’t Have Trump to Hide Behind/There’s now space for other scandals. Witness the Lincoln Project" by Frank Bruni (NYT). 

Ha! It's Trump's fault! Trump was so bad that the media couldn't pay any attention to anything else that might have been bad. That is some ripe bullshit from Frank Bruni. Let's read: 

[T]he Lincoln Project is unraveling... because Trump is out of office, and that not only deprives the organization of its fiercest mission and tight focus. His departure also opens the political actors there — and political actors everywhere — to more scrutiny and more reproach than they received when he was still around. 

Trump urgently demanded and rightly sopped up so much of the public’s contempt and the media’s attention that there was limited space left over for other scandals.

How were we the people supposed to pay attention to things that you the press didn't put into articles? The press "urgently demanded" that we the people remain in a state of continuous contempt for Trump and deprived us of anything that might have worked in Trump's favor. We had space in our head! But you the press wanted to inflate contempt for Trump so that it filled up our entire headspace. 

In that way he was like a concealer slathered over pox and warts beyond his own. 

So Trump covered up the ugliness of the Lincoln Project?! No, the Lincoln Project was making Trump look ugly. If we're doing makeup metaphor, it's more like the Lincoln Project was effective in depriving Trump of some concealer he wanted to use on himself, and the press was so into exclaiming over how bad Trump looked that it didn't want to talk about how bad the Lincoln Project looked. And now Frank Bruni doesn't want to talk about how bad the press looks. 

He was also in instances a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you raged against him, your past was wiped clean.

What a ludicrous reversion to the passive voice! The press gave the Lincoln Project the get-out-of-jail-free card. The press wiped the Lincoln Project clean.

Your own preening and avarice were laundered by your denunciations of his [sic]....

More passive voice. More metaphor. We've got makeup, Monopoly, filth-wiping, and laundry.  Take responsibility! When it comes to the Lincoln Project, the press massively failed. And the attempt to hide behind Trump is pathetic. The press was political and unprofessional. 

You want us to trust you because now that Trump is sidelined you can pay attention to other things? That's just admitting you follow a political agenda. The agenda has changed, but you haven't shown any interest in changing toward devotion to principles of journalism. You haven't shown any new propensity to go wherever the facts take you.

"It’s as much a war movie as anything else, with a woman as the general, and her gender isn’t the chink in her armor."

Wrote Frank Bruni, in the NYT last October, in "Sigourney Weaver Goes Her Own Way/Delivering performances both profound and eccentric, the actress has refused to be pinned down or defined throughout her nearly half-century career. At 71, she’s still going her own (mischievous) way." 

There were 9 other articles with the word "chink" in The New York Times in 2020. Today, the NYT's delightful word puzzle "Spelling Bee" challenges us to make words out of these letters....

... and it rejects the word "chink." If you try to enter it, you'll be told "Not in word list." 

I wasn't surprised to see this. I'd long observed the Spelling Bee's rejection of the word "coon," which can be a racial slur but, obviously, is also what people who call an opossum a "possum" call a raccoon. Last November, I blogged (at great length) about the Spelling Bee's rejection of the word "nappy."

The reason I'm blogging about this issue again, with "chink," is that the NYT printed the word "chink" 20 times in its own articles in 2020! When is a bad word so bad it's censored when it appears in a non-bad context? Take a position.

You know what? I took a position back in 2012. ESPN had fired a reporter for using the phrase "chink in the armor" in a headline that was about a Chinese basketball player. I felt sorry for the reporter, who'd used "chink in the armor" many times before and didn't mean to crack a joke about the player's race, but I wrote:

"Just five short years ago Jared and Ivanka were dinner-party royalty here in Manhattan. It’s that kind of place."

"They had money, they had youth, they had celebrity. They were thin. I’m told that their manners were impeccable, so you’d never know that his father was an actual felon and her father a de facto one. Besides, you can’t hold family against someone, can you? We don’t choose how we’re born. But from then on, we do make choices, and we’re accountable for those. Jared and Ivanka are about to be held accountable...."

So begins "Was It Worth It, Jared and Ivanka?/The glossiest grifters become Vuitton vagabonds" by Frank Bruni (NYT).

This desire for revenge is so ugly, but I'll take Bruni's word for it that it's impeccable manners within the context of "dinner-party royalty here in Manhattan." He said "here," so he must know.

Your side won, so why can't you be graceful about it? Will your next column be about how Joe Biden would bring everybody together if only the losing side weren't so intransigent?

I get the feeling the NYT is bracing for a Trump win.

I don't think the front page would look like this if they believed Biden is coasting toward victory. 

Front-page headlines/subheads that support my intuition: "Anxious but determined, Americans are pushing through challenges like the pandemic and long lines to cast their ballot," "A Frazzled World Holds Its Breath While the U.S. Chooses Its Leader," "The Day After Election Day/Current and former Trump administration officials are worried about what might happen on Nov. 4," "Fueled by Cash, Health Care and Trump’s Woes, Democrats Aim for Senate Control," "Trump Has Made the Whole World Darker," "How Lincoln Survived the Worst Election Ever/There are many parallels between 1860 and 2020. Let’s hope there aren’t too many," "Don’t Fool Yourself. Trump Is Not an Aberration." 

Where's Biden? There are a couple mentions of the disappearing man: "Some Older Voters Shift to Biden in Florida. Will It Be Enough for Him?/Polls suggest some retirees are shifting from having supported President Trump to voting for Joseph R. Biden Jr. But they are rare in Florida’s Republican heartland," "A last puzzle piece: Whether Joe Biden has a significant or modest lead comes down to Pennsylvania." 

There hasn't been talk of a Biden "landslide" in a long time. I think there's more of a desperate hope that he can hang on and discomfiture that Trump is still there, staying alive, never accepting that he was doomed. It's a hero's story for Trump, and that's got to hurt.

Here's Frank Bruni, 2 days ago, which I found searching the NYT archive for "Biden" and "landslide": 

I could be overreacting. Maybe, just ahead, there will be moments of grace, enough of them to redeem us. Maybe I’ll look up on or after Nov. 3 and see that Biden has won North Carolina, has won Michigan, has won every closely contested state and the presidency in a landslide. 

Maybe I’ll have to eat my words. Please, my fellow Americans, feed me my words. I’d relish that meal.

I also saw the word "landslide" in this letter to the editor on October 28, under the heading "It’s Biden! No, It’s Trump! Here Are Your Predictions Our readers suggest a wide range of scenarios that include landslides, pardons, claims of fraud, violence and the courts": 

Joe Biden eventually wins a landslide in the popular vote but on election night the vote looks close enough for President Trump to claim that he won. The Electoral College is close and is manipulated by Republican governors and legislators to swing a “win” for Mr. Trump. Legal challenges ensue, and the Supreme Court gives the presidency to Mr. Trump. The Senate barely keeps a Republican majority. There is violence in the streets, and the country is further ripped apart in despair and factionalism. Democracy as we know it no longer exists.

"Landslide" is merely an element in a Trump-victory fever dream. 

I could do the same thing with The Washington Post. Here's how the front page there looks right now. Click to enlarge and clarify and maybe you'll be able to find the word "Biden" — it's there, just hard to see. "Trump" is popping up all over:

The NYT's Frank Bruni says Trump replacing RBG will put us in "a special hell" — because the Court "won’t represent what most Americans believe."

He says those words — "won’t represent" — and he must immediately back and fill. He knows it's not right, but... but what?!

Sure, the court isn’t supposed to be beholden to public opinion, but...

But what?!!!

... Americans’ faith in their institutions and feeling that their voices are heard might be strained even further by what seem to be lurches backward by a court forged in the hottest flares of partisan passion.

Reread that. I love the way the word "strained" appears in the most strained sentence I've read all year. I mean really read. Mostly when I encounter strained prose, I'm disgusted and find something else to consume.

But I get sucked into this crazy sentence. It's full of colorful words but mind-bending if you try to picture what's going on. Let's see. Faith and feeling... might be strained... by lurches backward. Lurches backward might strain faith and feeling. And then there's a forge... so the Court is likened to metalwork of some kind.... yet it's capable of lurching. Backwards! Seemingly....

Bruni goes on to list questions of law that the new Court "could well" revisit — abortion, gay rights, voting rights, affirmative action. He presents this as a problem because the President who appointed the new justices doesn't have "deep-seated convictions" — or "a genuinely felt vision" — like some idealized liberal President who aspires to use the Supreme Court to achieve advances that are traditionally the work of legislatures. Bruni characterizes Trump as "the most brazen of opportunists" because he'd pick a nominee that would win him favor from voters.

That is, Bruni first complained that the Court won't be "representative" of Americans, then complained that Trump would not advance his personal political preferences but would think about what voters want. I suspect that Bruni's real point is that the Court ought to be political and liberal.



This picture of Hell is a detail from a fresco in a church in Bulgaria — found at the Wikipedia article "Hell." I chose it because of Bruni's "Hell" metaphor and his phrase "forged in the hottest flares of partisan passion" and because of the scales of justice in the upper left-hand corner.

"She’s a paragon of the values that Donald Trump, for all his practice as a performer, can’t even pantomime."

"She’s best described by words that are musty relics in his venal and vainglorious circle: 'sacrifice,' 'honor,' 'humility.' More than any of the many extraordinary women on Biden’s list of potential vice-presidential nominees, she’s the anti-Trump, the antidote to the ugliness he revels in and the cynicism he stokes. Americans can feel good — no, wonderful — about voting for a ticket with [Tammy] Duckworth on it. And we’re beyond hungry for that. We’re starving. That ache transcends all of the other variables that attend Biden’s deliberations as he appraises Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Val Demings and others: race, age, experience, exact position on the spectrum from progressive to moderate. Duckworth, a former Army lieutenant colonel who lost both of her legs during combat duty in Iraq, is a choice that makes exquisite emotional and moral sense...."

From "Biden’s Best Veep Pick Is Obvious/She, more than anyone, can get under Trump’s skin" by Frank Bruni (NYT).

By the way, I'm so tired of hearing about "getting under Trump's skin." But it's not Bruni's phrase. It's only in the headline.

"In Rodham, Bill Clinton marries another, more conventionally feminine woman and becomes governor of Arkansas."

"When a cabaret singer... exposes the longtime affair she’s had with him, Clinton and his wife agree to an interview on 60 Minutes. In our world, Hillary’s forceful participation in that interview saved Bill’s career; in Sittenfeld’s novel, his girlier wife crumbles on the air, and so do his political prospects. Sittenfeld’s Bill Clinton decamps to Silicon Valley, where he becomes a tech mogul, the glad-handing face of a web services company, and very, very rich. Then he gets interested in politics again.... Hillary Rodham never marries, becomes a law professor, then a senator, then the first female candidate to run for president on a major party ticket in 2016. In the absence of a Clinton candidacy, George H.W. Bush is elected to a second term in 1992, followed by a one-term Jerry Brown presidency and two terms of John McCain. Several major historical events, most notably 9/11 and the Iraq war, never occur, leaving Sittenfeld’s Hillary untainted by a Senate vote supporting the latter. She dirties her hands a bit—running against Carol Moseley Braun in a Senate primary and accepting the endorsement of Donald Trump—but the character Sittenfeld makes of this alternate Hillary remains essentially static: cautious, mildly humorous, committed to public service, but no firebrand. Above all, she is diligent, a grind. The weakness of Rodham is this lack of any significant transformation. Unlike Alice Blackwell, [the Laura Bush character in Sittenfeld's American Wife], Hillary Rodham doesn’t come to the gradual realization that she has thrown away her life on a man she can no longer respect and whose values she doesn’t share. Sittenfeld’s Hillary eventually grasps how perilous her passion for Bill Clinton was, but that’s a revelation without much of a price... Alice Blackwell has humbler dreams than Hillary Rodham....  Sittenfeld’s Hillary... is an admirable woman, but a bit boring, her interior life free of the kind of conflicts that make for a fascinating heroine... [The real-life Hillary is] a survivor of conditions most of us could not endure or even really imagine.... How could we hope to truly know such a person, or more to the point, how can we go on kidding ourselves that this is her fault?"

From "Curtis Sittenfeld’s New Book Imagines if Hillary Never Married Bill/Rodham isn’t as satisfying as her novel about Laura Bush, but together, they’re both richer" (Slate).

The answer to that question — "How could we hope to truly know such a person?" — should be: by reading a 400-page novel published by Random House that purports to explore precisely this topic. Characters in novels tend to go through "conditions most of us could not endure or even really imagine," and it's up to the novelist to make the character comprehensible and excitingly interesting. The question isn't whether it's Hillary Clinton's fault that we don't know what she's really like inside, but whether it's the author's fault that there isn't a compelling imagined inner life.

Here's the book, in case you want to read it. I was interested in it because someone I respect recommended it. The publication date is May 19th, so I assume this person had an advance copy. I hope. It's awful when authors promote each other's book based on their friendship or their interest in mutual promotion. The author's allegiance should be to the reader.

AND: Does this book rely on the premise that Hillary Clinton married Bill Clinton simply out of "passion"? I've always thought she figured that the partnership was a good bet in the achievement of her worldly ambitions. It's so soppy not to give her that.

ALSO: I'm reading "Hillary Never Married Bill/A new novel hypothesizes a different history — and future — for a trailblazing woman" by Frank Bruni (NYT), who interviews the author:

I mentioned her fixation on first ladies and asked whether there might be Michelle Obama and Melania Trump novels to come. No, she said, suggesting that Michelle’s 2018 memoir, “Becoming,” was so openhearted and definitive that it didn’t leave much room for a novelist.

And Melania? Sittenfeld declined to say much about the current first lady to me, but she previously told The Guardian that she didn’t “see her as someone whose consciousness I yearn to explore.”...

So what does Sittenfeld "yearn to explore"? The next thing in this piece is:

There are whole facets of public figures’ humanity — of the Clintons’ humanity — that we don’t have access to and can’t explore... Indulging in guesswork, [Sittenfeld] visited interiors and rummaged around in intimacies that are otherwise off limits.

“Falling in love and kissing another person — that’s what you read novels for, and that’s what you write novels for,” she said. “I certainly read a lot of nonfiction and respect it, but even the most personal profile of a public figure is not going to have almost anything about them kissing or feeling attracted to someone or maybe having sex and feeling awkward.”

And the piece began with the line "Curtis Sittenfeld likes to imagine the sex lives of presidents." I'm going to say Sittenfeld doesn't want to live vicariously within the persona of Michelle Obama or Melania Trump because she's not turned on by imagining having sex with either Barack Obama or (especially) Donald Trump.

"Has Anyone Found Trump’s Soul? Anyone?"

That's a headline in the NYT. A column by Frank Bruni.

How sanctimonious and simultaneously blind do you need to be to proclaim the soullessness of another human being?

I mean, it's tempting sometimes. I was just driving home from a glorious sunrise...



... and I had the satellite radio on MSNBC. Mika Brzezinski was reading some news story, got the word "humane" and pronounced it "hoo-mane." I wondered, is she even there? Robot mode. But I didn't question her humanity. Hoomanity.

The subheadline on that Bruni piece is — I am not kidding — "He’s not rising to the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic. He’s shriveling into nothingness."

Well, it's a column. It's subjective. Bruni is seeing the President shriveling into nothingness. Wishful thinking. Why won't this man disappear entirely?

Do you remember President George W. Bush’s remarks at Ground Zero in Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? ... Do you remember President Barack Obama’s news conference after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 28 people, including 20 children, dead? I do.... Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?

It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.

And maybe because you hate him so much you can't see it. I see it every day when I watch the press briefing.

In Trump’s predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can’t, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don’t know what to do with.

I could sense... I can’t... me with a sorrow and a rage... I quite frankly don’t know....

Bruni knows he's talking about his own subjective experience, but he cannot stop. He insists on dehumanizing his adversary.

[Trump stressed that masks are] voluntary and that he himself wouldn’t be going anywhere near one that he might as well have branded them Apparel for Skittish Losers. I’ve finally settled on his epitaph: “Donald J. Trump, too cool for the coronavirus.”

That is, Bruni is picturing Trump catching the coronavirus and dying. The epitaph says "too cool." Speaking of cool, that's cold, Mr. Bruni. Is this what entertains the readers of the NYT? Standing back, looking for the bad, and laughing at the image of Trump dead and buried?

This is more than a failure of empathy....

Thanks for writing a next line that was the very thing I was thinking about you.

It’s more than a failure of decency, which has been my go-to lament. It’s a failure of basic humanity.

Hoomanity. It's that thing you say the people you don't like don't have. It's a wonderful foundation for building a political ideology.

In The Washington Post a few days ago, Michael Gerson, a conservative who worked in Bush’s White House, wrote that Trump’s spirit is “a vast, trackless wasteland.”

Oh! Bruni is copying Gerson's idea. Trying to get in on the hot Trump-hating over there in America's other newspaper.

Not exactly trackless. There are gaudy outposts of ego all along the horizon.

I see Bruni stumbling through the canyons of his mind. There's an outpost up ahead... your next stop — the Trump Hotel. Columnists check in. But they never check out.

"Do we want a livid warrior or a happy one? Someone eager to name and shame enemies, the way Donald Trump does, or someone with a less Manichaean outlook?"

"Someone poised to reciprocate Trump’s nastiness or someone incapable of it? I’m not entirely sure which type is more likely to defeat him. But I know which gives us a better chance at healing America — if that’s even possible — and moving us past a juncture of crippling animosity. It’s the type that Hickenlooper represents and maybe even exemplifies.... Optimism, warmth and joy matter. They propelled Ronald Reagan to the presidency. I think they’re even a small part of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez phenomenon — the part that leavens the stridency and purity tests. She has a wide, dazzling smile. In a video that went viral, she dances. Some of the Democrats who are pursuing or seriously considering presidential bids are better at dancing, metaphorically speaking, than others. It doesn’t come easily to Bernie Sanders, which is why he added all that poignant family history to his big speech on Saturday, or to Elizabeth Warren, which is why she sipped a beer in an Instagram video that was part of her rollout. It’s effortless for Beto O’Rourke. It’s present in Cory Booker. It comes and goes with Kamala Harris, who’s still calibrating her temperature.... Hickenlooper sees a sunny approach — one that emphasizes aspirations over grievances — as the necessary balm for a grossly divided country and the most potent antidote to Trump...."

From "Does John Hickenlooper Have a Secret Weapon? Maybe nice guys finish Trump" by Frank Bruni (NYT).

The second-most-up-voted comment is from someone with the insight to adopt the screen name "Me":

Just no.

I’m done with “happy”, “consensus-building” Democrats. I’m still young, and I want to see transformational change in this country before I’m dead— enough with the baby steps.

Time to bring the fire.

Bruni uses but doesn't delve into the phrase "happy warrior." To me, it means Hubert Humphrey:

Humphrey's consistently cheerful and upbeat demeanor, and his forceful advocacy of liberal causes, led him to be nicknamed "The Happy Warrior" by many of his Senate colleagues and political journalists.... As Vice President, Humphrey was criticized for his complete and vocal loyalty to Johnson and the policies of the Johnson Administration, even as many of his liberal admirers opposed the president's policies with increasing fervor regarding the Vietnam War.... [H]is nickname, "the Happy Warrior", was used against him.... 

And I see that William Safire wrote one of his "On Language" (NYT) columns about the phrase. This was back in 2004, when John Kerry was running for President. A WaPo columnist had just written that Kerry was "dour" and no one would call him "the happy warrior," and a Democratic Senator had just insulted President George W. Bush as "the happy warrior" who "strutted" about his military adventures.

Safire informs us that the phrase originated in a William Wordsworth poem, "Character of the Happy Warrior" (1807)(''Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he/That every man in arms should wish to be?.... Whose high endeavors are an inward light/That makes the path before him always bright:/ . . . But who, if he be called upon to face/Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined/Great issues, good or bad for human kind,/Is happy as a Lover'').

Safire tells the story of how the phrase got from the Wordsworth poem into American political discourse. In 1924, Franklin Roosevelt had the task of putting the name Al Smith up for nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Smith campaign manager Joseph Proskauer had written a speech using the phrase, and FDR rejected it — saying "You can't give poetry to a political convention." So FDR drafted his own speech, but it was worse, and he ended up giving in.  Insisting that it would be "a flop," he gave Proskauer's "Happy Warrior speech." But it went well, so he claimed he'd given his own speech with that one bit from Proskauer ''stuck in.'' Proskauer sulked.

So much for happiness.